The Long Shadow of Science Past; Long Island Labs, on the Defensive, Struggle for Community Confidence

By MICHAEL COOPER

Published: August 20, 2000

ORIENT POINT, N.Y.—
Long Island has long had a deeply uneasy and sometimes bizarrely suspicious relationship with the scientific enterprises that have taken root on its shores.

A deadly disease was sure to escape from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center -- a mile off the eastern end of Long Island here. The genetics research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was sure to develop altered foods that would ruin people's health and the environment alike. If Brookhaven National Laboratory did not completely radiate Suffolk County, it was sure to cause a black hole that would pull everyone from Alec Baldwin to Amy Fisher in for good.

Of course, the institutions themselves are partly to blame. Although it was confined to Plum Island, there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease there in 1978. Cold Spring, for its part, was a leader of the shadowy eugenics movement during the first half of the 20th century, propounding racist pseudoscientific human breeding theories. And a byproduct of Brookhaven's Nobel Prize-winning research was enough pollution in the area to make the federal government name the lab a Superfund site; the government also found that the lab should have done more to prevent, or at least detect, a leak of radioactive water that was discovered in 1996.

It has become one of the great enduring battles of Long Island: finding an acceptable balance between the scientific institutions and a highly divergent population that mixes commuters and celebrities, baymen with moguls, pensioners and new homeowners. The arguments take on a special vehemence here, where conservatives and liberals are united by a radical environmentalism and a whole generation has cut its political teeth keeping the Shoreham nuclear power plant from opening after it was built at a cost of $5.5 billion.

As a result, some laboratories now find themselves fighting against their own pasts. For institutions like Plum Island and Brookhaven, which are run by the federal government, it is more than a question of good neighborliness. If they fail to win support from the community, and the politicians who represent their areas, they will lose government financing and programs.

Take Plum Island. Some neighbors like to paint it a latter-day island of Dr. Moreau, and they trade outlandish yarns about 50-foot chickens who scratch and peck there. Others have more carefully reasoned concerns about safety precautions at the lab, and its occasional requests to transport viruses or infected animals on and off the island. Recently, when the government proposed giving Plum Island the ability to study animal viruses that can be passed on to humans, those concerns boiled over. The plan was scuttled, for now.

So David Huxsoll, the new director of Plum Island, which is run by the Department of Agriculture, said the relationship with the public would be a large part of his job description. And he has a radical plan to win community support: he wants to open up the long-isolated island to guided tours.

The proposal has met with, well, mixed reactions. ''Visit Toxic World -- A New Day of Fun Dawns at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center,'' was the headline of one mocking article in Dan's Papers, a weekly Hamptons institution.

A similar ''see for yourself'' approach is employed farther west, in Upton, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Its director, John H. Marburger 3rd, is also trying to make up some of the goodwill that was lost before his watch began. To that end, he has invited more local civic groups -- including critics -- onto panels about the lab, has briefed more community organizations and has continued to hold open houses about research projects.

Given the lab's past, it can still be a very hard sell, and one that some scientists worry is undermined by a fear or distrust of science itself.

''The public has never been more dependent on science, and yet the public has never been more distrustful of science,'' said Dr. Robert P. Crease, an associate professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who is working on the second volume of a history of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

In some cases the fear originates with fringe groups that spread odd conspiracy theories worthy of ''The X-Files,'' like a book called ''The Montauk Project'' that is cited by people who insist that the Army experimented with space aliens in Montauk during World War II.

But the fear also manifests itself in groups closer to the mainstream that are worried about the environment and children's health and concerned by what they consider a cavalier and sometimes misleading attitude on the part of scientists in the past.

This is not just found on Long Island. A report on the topic released recently by the British House of Lords warned that ''public unease, mistrust and occasional outright hostility are breeding a climate of deep anxiety among scientists.''

Some scientists warn that this view is too simplistic. As Dr. Marburger, the director of Brookhaven, said, ''Parents still want their children to learn about science, and they are not unhappy if their children become scientists or engineers.''

But for institutions that are dependent on public financing, any loss of confidence is a dangerous thing. Brookhaven is a case in point.